Stinger - Sounds like a great game to review at the height of spring and heading into summer. Especially with the birds singing, and the bees trying to have sex with them…as is my understanding. It has to be about something with a stinger, right? Perhaps a scorpion, but more likely a wasp or bee, right? After all, this game is a follow-up to Konami's early vertical  SHMUP   TwinBee ! If you made that apiary assumption, though, you’d bee wrong... very wrong... just like me. Having never played the game before, but seeing it included in various lists, this comes as a bit of a surprise. You don’t even get to be shaped like a bee or a wasp (for that, you may want the even earlier arcade vertical SHMUP  Funky Be e) , but you do get to fly and kill things. But if that isn’t enough, the game's story is very 80s and that is what we’re here to discuss today. What is the story? Well… Egads! Professor Cinnamon, Earth’s flamboyant genius, has been kidnapped by evil alien bandits fro...

"No." We all grow up hearing that word a ton. No, don’t put that power cord in your mouth. No, don’t stick your finger in that socket. No, don’t touch the dice. No, you can’t go outside right now. No, you can’t play games right now. No, no, No, NO, NO! No is no. No is always no. If they say no, it means a thousand times no. Wait, I can’t play games right now?! But I’m (legally) an adult now! When you first become a functioning adult, you can start making the choice to say "yes" to things like gaming when you want. Unfortunately, becoming an adult also brings a lot of burdens, as well, and parenthood only compounds those obligations (although the kids can sometimes be a great excuse to get out of things you actually don’t want to do... unlike gaming.)  Recently, I’ve had to say "no" to gaming multiple times, even though I really wanted to say "yes" to each opportunity. So this week, I’d like to talk a bit about saying "no"… to gaming. ...

Death!!!! Death stalks you at every corner! There it is, right there! Deeaaath! Ok, maybe that was just a lamp…behind you! Oh right, that’s just the cat. There it is again! Lamp again. Really though, death is rampant in tabletop games. We’ve even previously talked about the particular issue of your players becoming Murder Hobos, those transient adventurers that travel from location to location, killing NPCS all over, and shaking the bodies down for anything they can use or sell. Given how D&D got its start, and the similar ways you can fund your character's activities in many of the digital games D&D's inspired, it isn’t a surprise this is a common occurrence. For this post though, we’re going to talk about a related topic close to the core of the issue: Death . Or rather, to be specific... Murder !  But with the high technology and/or magic so common in most of our tabletop settings, at what point does murder actually become murder? Why are murders in game narratives...

Here we are again, the Ides of March. And while our own issues with lunatic despots are unlikely to be resolved in a manner similar to Ceaser’s (metaphorically... maybe), we must persevere and strive on. So, along with the anniversary of a certain Roman power transition, the middle of the month brings us Pi Day… and our Annual Blogiversary! We all know what that means… prepare to be skewered with terrible pie puns! Et tu, fructose? - B Bake It So, Number One As the command team of the USS Enterpie , the PCs seek out new ingredients, new baking techniques, and boldly taking the oven to temperatures no one has gone to before.  Rolling Pin on the River The PCs must plan and execute a daring heist on a riverboat casino holding a regional baking competition. Will they be able to smuggle out pastries stuffed with ill-gotten gains, or will they end up with pie on their faces (and possibly at the bottom of the river)? (C)rust  The objective? To make enough pies to survive the wilds of...

Every February, in both the US and Canada, there's a special designation for what is, unfortunately, the  shortest month of the year: African-American History Month (or simply Black History Month if you’re in Canada). While I don’t have a direct personal or familial connection to that community myself these days, I feel the blog should still spotlight thematically-appropriate media, especially media that we may remember fondly, but has largely been overlooked. For this post, we’ll be looking at one of the first African-American superheroes on TV. No, not Zack Taylor/the Black Ranger as made famous by Walter Emanuel Jones... this isn’t a Power Rangers post. The hero we're talking about is recognized as the first African-American superhero on TV in the US - in prime time, no less! Not only that, as if the creators weren't defying standard superhero tropes enough (especially for the early 90s), the titular superhero character was also disabled. Ring any vague bells, 90s kids?...

The Weather Stone  remains a time-honored favorite method of “checking” weather conditions, be it in the real world or in the one in a tabletop game. You just can’t beat the accuracy. Perhaps it's been on my mind due to the "rocky" weather we’ve had recently, with "snowcrete" jamming up roads and pathways everywhere around me. Or maybe the fact that my eldest is now participating in Scouting that summons memories of Weather Stones seen during my own days of Scout Outings. Of course, if you want to go read deeply into my thoughts on the Weather Stone and its mysterious, clairvoyant powers, you can just go read the post linked above. What we haven't covered, aside from some breezy mentions in other posts, is the concept of weather itself in tabletop games: why it's important, how best to include it, and some off the wall things you might consider scattering into your own games. While this could have been a subsection in one of our larger " environment...